My impression of google from age ~15 was of a company who had balanced profitability with genuine altruistic intent. They had so many products, tools, services, libraries... everything and pretty much all of it was free and freely available.
It hasn't really changed that much, but jesus, my perception has. Charging for Google Maps was a warning sign, though it only really applied to companies, fair game. Wave was flippant, it came and went too fast to understand the gesture. Google Notes always needed some love and attention it was never going to get.
But Google Reader? It was/is uniquely useful. Widely supported, widely loved, widely used (as far as I can tell). It was the kind of thing that made me feel Google had your best interests at heart, I can't imagine it made them much money.
Just to clarify, I'm not upset about Google Reader, far from it http://theoldreader.com/ looks entirely capable of picking up the slack. It's just upsetting to see a company that I really thought was different is just a company with margins and directives and the rest. I guess I'm an idiot.
It hasn't really changed that much, but jesus, my perception has. Charging for Google Maps was a warning sign, though it only really applied to companies, fair game. Wave was flippant, it came and went too fast to understand the gesture. Google Notes always needed some love and attention it was never going to get.
But Google Reader? It was/is uniquely useful. Widely supported, widely loved, widely used (as far as I can tell). It was the kind of thing that made me feel Google had your best interests at heart, I can't imagine it made them much money.
Just to clarify, I'm not upset about Google Reader, far from it http://theoldreader.com/ looks entirely capable of picking up the slack. It's just upsetting to see a company that I really thought was different is just a company with margins and directives and the rest. I guess I'm an idiot.